With over 3000 themes suggested by the community, how do we make that more manageable? With this!

It’s like hot-or-not for Ludum Dare themes. Click the graphic above, and keep clicking until you can click no more! Every click helps, and we’ve got a lot more to filter than last time, so click more and click often!

Next week we kick off Warmup Weekend (April 19th-20th), and begin main Theme Voting. So tune in for that. Things are getting real here. I hope you like the new purple look too (might require a refresh). This is our first major event of 2014, and our 12th year running Ludum Dare. Lets make it a good year!

Special thanks again to Sorceress for preparing the theme list for me.

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on Thursday, April 10th, 2014 at 1:16 pm and is filed under LD #29.
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Make sure you folks manually check for those (and themes we’ve already had) before setting up the voting. Every time there’s something like “lol food” in the voting, it gives the impression that the organizers don’t give a shit.

It’s kind of important for both the image of the event and the actual success of the voting, and it’s not that much work. Yeah, those themes won’t win the voting, but they might’ve pushed out a potential winner.

So if there’s going to be a standard set of themes anyway, seems more reasonable to have those repeat every LD, rather than just resetting all suggestions every time. Saves work for you guys if there’s no need for all those suggestions.

I settled on these groups because they fit well with the kinds of themes we always seem to have after the slaughter. I’d change the groups if they no longer worked.

I can believe that some people are tired of seeing the same kinds of themes appearing each LD. But I don’t know what a good solution to that would be. The themes which score highest in the slaughter are taken to be the themes people want, even if they are much the same from one LD to the next.

If you want to see some new & different themes in the final 80, then vote up the new & different themes in the theme slaughter. Vote down the themes you’re tired of seeing. What else can we do?

Please, please, cull any ‘little themes’ from the final 80. We’ve recently had “Tiny Worlds”, “Minimalism” (like “Minimalist” a while before), “10 seconds” and “You Only Get One” … any of which are fine in principle but it’s getting boring seeing so many in a row.

If from all the possible themes the last three had been: “poodles”, “labradors”, then “terriers” I would certainly hope you’d be culling anything canine-related, and I don’t see any reason to treat these ‘little themes’ differently.

Does anyone have a good suggestion of why this has been happening? I guess ‘little themes’ have been so popular lately because a lot of new participants are worried that they will only be able to make a ‘little game’ and they’re scared that it might look bad when compared to other entries unless everyone else is forced to make a ‘little game’ too. But anyone who’s been around for a while knows it doesn’t work like that and the theme shouldn’t be routinely hampered because of these fears.

That’s interesting! I hadn’t noticed these four themes had that in common. It’s certainly something we can keep in mind while preparing the final 80. If you (or anyone else) notices any other patterns in recent/past themes, be sure to point them out to us. Thanks

As for an explanation: perhaps these are the most tautological of themes? — A theme is a kind of restriction; and a kind of restriction is literally the theme here. Whether it’s restricted space (tiny worlds), or restricted time (10 seconds), or restricted content/story (minimalism, yogo)

I certainly agree that themes act as restrictions but I also believe that a theme’s function needn’t be expressed literally in its form… “epochs” or “without borders”, for example, could be perfectly acceptable themes despite the vast scope which they suggest. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of themes you could imagine wouldn’t have their meaning directly related to scope at all – “foliage”, “darkness”, “construction”, “aardvarks”, “laughter”, “exploration” … and so on; any of these could be huge, tiny or anywhere between with regard to space or time or game design & content.

I can see how the first two of those are similar, but 10 Secs and YOGO are less specific restrictions. They can very well be incorporated in content-wise large games. In the end, a theme is a type of restriction, so I guess people just like having clear restrictions.